What kind of weather's on the horizon? Flip a coin

Nov. 14, 2012

Written by

Brian Eason

@brianeason

Today: Sunny and windy, with a high near 50 and a low around 39. Thursday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 50 and a low around 41. Friday: Partly sunny, with a high near 50. Low around 41. Saturday-Sunday: Partly cloudy, with highs of about 50 and slight chances of rain. Lows around 40. Monday-Tuesday: Rainy, with highs around 50 and lows in the low-40s. Source: National Weather Service

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Meteorologists say storm-weary New Jerseyans will receive a break from the madness the rest of this week, but beyond that? The crystal ball becomes increasingly foggy.

The National Weather Service predicts equal chances of having above normal, below normal or normal temperatures and precipitation over the next few weeks.

In other words, they don’t have any idea what’s going to happen.

“I tell ya, anybody that’s (making long-range predictions) this year, they’d do just as well to flip a coin,” surmised David Robinson, state climatologist at Rutgers University.

Accuweather is taking a stab at it, calling for pretty average weather in the upcoming weeks and months. “Nothing like last winter, or snowier winters,” said Steve Travis, a meteorologist there. But Travis acknowledges that he can’t rule out more extreme weather, like a storm blowing in from the Great Lakes and lingering over the state for as much as 24 hours.

“I think things like that are possible, but the stuff I’m looking at right now doesn’t give me a real strong indication that that’s likely,” Travis said.

There’s always uncertainty with long-range forecasting, but the seeds of doubt are plentiful this year. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration last week called off earlier warnings of El Nińo conditions in the Pacific Ocean this winter, one of the only good indicators meteorologists had to work with.

“That indicator (El Nińo) is at best modestly out there for the taking,” Robinson said. “And there’s no other strong indicators out there, so there’s a lot of wild cards. And frankly, even when there are some strong indicators out there, our Jersey mid-Atlantic area has very little skill when it comes to long-range outlooks.”

That lack of “skill” isn’t an indictment on the forecasters. Robinson said the area is just tough to predict, because weather can develop from any direction.

That’s in essence what happened when superstorm Sandy came ashore from the Pacific, followed so closely by last week’s nor’easter, which actually formed in the Midwest. Both got caught in the same jet stream, dumping their payloads on New Jersey only eight days apart.

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Two major events

One meteorologist, Dave Tolleris of the weather modeling site WxRisk.com, said two such events back-to-back are unprecedented in recorded history.

“That has never happened before,” he wrote on his Facebook page. “Well, not since 1870 and probably not since 1776.”

Neither NWS nor Accuweather could confirm the historic nature of the two events, but their meteorologists agree they were unlikely.

“Odds are you would not even see one of them, let alone two of them back-to-back for this October/early November time period,” said Mitchell Gaines, a meteorologist at NWS’ regional office in Mount Holly.

Robinson noted that it isn’t unheard of to see two extreme weather events back-to-back — what’s unusual is that “the extremes are just so very different here in New Jersey.”

“It’s really not the most common thing in the world,” Travis said. “But was it entirely unexpected given the conditions and the time frame in which it occurred? I would say no.”

Robinson said climate change may be an underlying factor to having the two unseasonal storms at the same time — but he stopped short of directly tying the storms to human impact on the climate.

“A colleague of mine likes to say it’s like Barry Bonds on steroids,” Robinson said. “Barry Bonds is still going to hit a lot of home runs. We believe he hit more because of the steroids, but take any one of his home runs and you couldn’t say if it was steroid-caused or not.”

But whether New Jersey’s in for calmer skies or more extreme weather, there is, at least, some encouraging news: None of the models call for locusts or pestilence, as Gov. Chris Christie jokingly predicted this week.